It’s about as close to a crystal ball as one can get when predicting how Calistoga might look in the distant future.

The City of Calistoga on Wednesday, July 23 made good on its promise to offer copies of a draft Urban Design Plan to the public in a variety of formats, including hard copy, CD and made available on the city’s Internet Web site.

“People have been very anxious and looking forward to the release of this draft document,” said City Manager Jim McCann. “We were very careful and spent a lot of time (on the design of the document) deciding what parts go where, which is real important as far as the gist and the real meat of it is concerned.”

The 118-page draft plan is a glossy, three-chapter plan that suggests the future planning being considered for Calistoga. It focuses largely on five areas of planning, including so-called “Gateway Areas.”  These are the areas of town where people first enter the city of Calistoga; some community corridors, such as the Foothill Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue corridors; and the downtown area, divided into two basic districts, the historic district and the Fair Way/ Stevenson District. The latter is divided further into sub-areas where changes are expected to occur. These smaller areas include the Wilkinson-Gliderport sub-area; the Lincoln Avenue frontage; the Central portion; the “Down-Valley” natural area; and finally, the Stevenson-Grant sub-area.

“We’re really excited,” McCann said. “It’s taken a long time to get to this point.”

The plan is the result of dozens of meetings, both public and with individual groups of stakeholders, or business and property owners, who might be most immediately impacted by some of the ideas of the draft plan.

Over the next two months or so, the city plans to hold a series of public meetings to reintroduce the plan to the public and go over some of the newest ideas that have occurred since the plan was first rolled out at a public meeting nearly two years ago.

“There are a lot of images in this plan that are very familiar, meant to evoke the character of what we desire to attain,” McCann said. “Each new chapter has specific prose and photographs to kind of set the character of each part of the plan.”

After the public has had about two months to examine the plan, the Planning Commission will begin the formal public review process of the draft document and it will be in the hands of the Calistoga City Council sometime in November.

A copy of the plan may be borrowed or purchased from City Hall. The entire document may also be purchased on CD for $5, or downloaded from the City of Calistoga Internet Web site, located at www.ci.calistoga.ca.us.

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